If you are a college student today enrolled in four classes during any given semester, it is likely that only one of your teachers is employed by your school in a permanent position that comes with a middle-class salary, job security, and benefits. The other three are contingent faculty, often called “adjuncts”; they have job titles like “instructor” or “lecturer” rather than “professor” but their roles in the classroom are the same.

link: Adjuncts and the Devalued PhD

I am inaugurating a new category of posts called “Adjunctivitis,” focusing on issues of concern to adjunct/contingent faculty, their spouses and families, their students, their tenured or tenure-track colleagues, college and university administrators, policy makers, and concerned citizens. Watch for tweets of interest as well.

Every single academic, especially in the humanities, has a tinge of buyer’s remorse [about their PhD]. You see your peers in law or business school make down payments on homes and buy cars and go on vacation. But as a PhD student, you’re in your 30s, still renting an apartment and driving an ’84 Corolla. It’s not cute.

Advice:  Learn a trade!